So . . . anybody up for "Naked Apron and Kase-san"?

wait did anybody actually die then?

Ending is open on that score.

It may even be that someone died, but the main characters are literally capable of making the world change with the power of their love, and so the setting has altered to make the person retroactively not have died. I won't insist on that interpretation, but it has certainly been made available.

takes off wig to reveal slightly shorter hair of the exact same color
What is it with manga and forgetting that extensions are a thing and they're a hell of a lot easier and more real-looking than wigs?

In this case the wig is used to shorten her fringe, otherwise her hair usually covers her right eye and prevents people from recognising her. Somewhat surprised that the fans can't recognise Ten without her right eye though

Definitely should have worn glasses. That would do the trick. Ask Mr. Kent.

Why does the title make me picture a dinosaur on a skateboard?

It made me think of dinosaur yuri.

I assume everyone here was rooting for Spino-ko in "The Maiden in Love is a Carnivore".

The bear symbolism in the anime was heavily tied to the views and expectations of lesbianism and they way they're treated in Japanese culture, but the bear symbolism here is something psychologically tied to Ginko and her mother

Well, that's not too surprising I guess. Morishima Akiko's approach to the issue of how Japanese culture reacts to lesbianism has always been pretty much "I refuse to give a fuck", so it would be out of character for her to turn around and explore it and treat it as a big inhibiting issue.
And it's always felt to me like a conscious strategy--basically "My characters will behave as if social acceptance is not an issue, and by refusing to treat it as a problem we will assume acceptance into existence".

last edited at Aug 20, 2016 1:39AM

Meanwhile, is there something wrong with me if I thought this chapter actually explained quite a bit? OK, true, some completely ludicrous things happened, but the overall shape of what's been up all this time is becoming pretty clear (and is in a way disappointingly ordinary).
I mean, this turns out to be a story of the return of the long-lost childhood first love, a staple of shoujo romance. It's just that in this case, one of the childhood lovers accidentally killed the other one's mother, and reacted by doing weird displacing things both in terms of memory and perception, perhaps with her mother's help when mom realized she couldn't handle the truth. Since the lover's mother she shot was a bear-hunter and because of her own mom's stylistic issues, the whole bear thing got brought in. After all, who would have killed a bear-hunter? A bear, clearly.
She didn't consciously remember her first love, but when she saw her again she perceived her as the only human because first love and because her slain mom was clearly not a bear. And she fell for her all over again, and since then the story has been to a fair extent about her gaining the strength to face the truth, layer by layer, so the two of them could overcome the trauma and love each other without being haunted by the past.
So in essence, childhood sweethearts + traumatic event and almost Freudian repression, overcome by the therapy of love.
And, OK, there's some stuff about them having somehow met while still in their mom's wombs and being almost destined to love, to fulfill in this generation what the previous generation didn't have the moxie to pull off.
Sprinkle symbolism as/if desired.

last edited at Aug 19, 2016 7:19PM

Completely off-topic... but speaking of pulling bullshit out of one's ass, i'm listening to one of my country's presidential candidates. talk about Argumentum ex culo and the mother of all BS arguments... ugh! :-(

It is somewhat frightening that
1) Given the most obvious assumption about what country that is, this gives me no way of telling which candidate it was, and
2) Really, if I'm being fair, it doesn't actually give any guidance whatsoever about what president-headed country that might be.

That feeling when the discussion tells you you really shouldn't read that thing, but you do anyway.

Fraternal bond is still there. We just also get something . . . extra. It's a breath mint and a candy mint.

Nezchan posted:

rip flip phones.

That sounds like it'd be hard to do...

Just hit one with a Nokia, that'll do the job.

Why yes, I always use my new, state of the art flip phone. Why do you ask?

By the way, what's a smart phone? Is it some sort of super flip phone?

"Smart phone" is an ironic name for a kind of phone which, when you're composing a message, changes your spelling so it's wrong and refuses to let you put it back.

Yea I like the setting and I don't mind Kaede being unorganized and childish but common, don't make her into completely inept person. For crying out loud Kazuki can't even tell if she is actually working or not. What a great image of mangaka.

That part feels kind of like mangaka self-deprecating in-joke to me.
Although I do wonder . . . I get the impression this girl is always sending in storyboards but never apparently working on an actual manuscript; is she even getting published?

last edited at Aug 15, 2016 3:19PM

Bloody hell, was the black hair guy drama not over? It's so unnecessary and idiotic, pls stop.

Did he have drama before? This isn't the same as the guy who was pursuing her and being a dick. This is her playboy bandmate who as far as I know only just recently turned out to be using the "going for all different girls because he can't have her" schtick.

I was going to mention the story seems to be hinting at Misha's mother being deceased and her animosity towards maids and caretakers being based around her belief that nobody can replace her mother, which would be a rather touching piece of character and narrative development.

But I'll just join everyone else in talking about sweet abs.

Well, for what it's worth, hypothetically if you had mentioned such a thing I would have agreed.

The autor likes muscular girls and lolis AND draws in moe style... If this were hentai it would be really weird

Maybe the author can do more than one art style. The art seems like it's done to strengthen the impact of the content--note that the MC is obsessed with moe stuff (dressing little girls in frilly dresses and such); with both the character being moe-obsessed and the art being that style, it makes the "air force sergeant" reveal and the abs all the more unexpected, jarring and funny. Well played I say.

Canadian.

Also Canadian. And I happen to know, so is Nezchan. Odd coincidence, what?
Incidentally, I believe (at least some) Chinese educational authorities have decided to standardize on teaching Canadian English because it's the most . . . neutral. Words pronounced closest to dictionary, a nice compromise between the various American and British Englishes.

I find this one a bit less appealing too, but it's partly because the older partner isn't taking responsibility in any way. Like, the kid knows nothing, but is enthusiastic as hell, wants to learn, wants to be useful. She could eventually become useful, which would make her happy and fulfilled.

So what does the older partner do? Does she mentor the kid? Does she teach her any skills? No, first she just sloughs the issue off with "You're fine as your current (helpless, useless) self"--but only in a vague, wishy-washy kind of way, nothing that really affirms her worth or indicates emotional attachment or anything. Then eventually she says "You want to be useful? Here, have a plant. I won't tell you anything about how to take care of it, I'll just set you up for failure." Gee, thanks. Same goes for the garden stuff--"Weed these plants. No, I won't tell you among all the massive variety of medicinal plants what might constitute a weed, just try at random and I'll make you feel like a moron when you get it wrong." Uh huh. And she's supposed to be the competent one?

The servant seems to mostly operate on a "defend my turf (and badmouth the mistress for not being able to take it from me)" approach.

The kid is adorable. It's not her fault she's useless, she wants to change. The other two don't seem to want her to, but they want to look down on her for being the way she is at the same time.

(The earthworm was very cute)

Either this is really stupid, or "deference to senpai" culture is way out of hand. So this chick used to be the president, so what? She ain't the president now, she doesn't even attend the school. She sure as hell isn't the principal or a teacher or anything. Why the hell is she supposed to be in a position to expel people?

Goodness, my plaintive cries were answered quickly. Three chapters, my cup runneth over.
Although that third chapter . . .
Kase-san and cliffhangers.

last edited at Aug 10, 2016 2:40PM

@takachi
She means since she started working there, i.e. since chapter one.

I don't get it T__T Hina says, "I haven't even been working here for half a year." Or did she want to say that she didn't feel as if she was working over the last half a year because it was too much fun with Hana?

What's there to get? She just feels bad that she's quitting without having worked there for a long enough amount of time (6 months)
It means that in total, the amount of time she worked there is less than 6 months.
Obviously she's been working there for more than "half a month" man, lmao
The story started roughly around March I'd say, Hina haven't entered HS yet and the weather still being cold enough for Hana to wear the tanuki cosplay and feel at ease/warm.
Now they're thinking about their upcoming summer break, so probs around July, so I'm guessing that ever since Hina started working, approximately 3-4 months.
She does say less than half a year, not that 6 months have passed, that'd be way after summer break at that point

I see. Could be my Engrish, but I'd sure prefer it phrased as "I've started working here less than even half a year" as opposed to "I haven't even been working here for half a year".

Nezchan is right. (spoilering a long, pedantic dissection of the grammar and usage involved. Could be useful as a lesson but ignore it otherwise)

Your first phrasing is not only not as good, it's bad grammar--and not the kind of "bad grammar that everyone uses and understands" either, but the sort of bad grammar that causes confusion. Whereas the second phrasing is correct and also to me, and I think to most native English speakers, quite clear and normal usage. "I haven't (even) been working here half a year" == "I have been working here less than half a year" with the implication that "half a year" is, how to put it, the next significant time division that would have been reached (so for instance, you wouldn't say that after ten days; you'd say "I haven't . . . two weeks"). The "even" part implies that, considering some other thing under discussion, this is a (surprisingly or inappropriately) short time. This could be either good or bad, e.g. "X got promoted for being so awesome, and she hasn't even been working here for half a year!" or "Ei-chan made the final four at the Whatever Cup, and he hasn't even been playing tennis for two years!"

English usage, frankly, is weird--it seemed so natural and inevitable to me until I started dissecting it and realized half of that stuff isn't really implied by anything grammatical. It's just the way that phrasing works.

(On that first phrasing--the things wrong. 1: "I've started working" isn't necessarily wrong, but if you're going to attach a time to it, it probably is. So for instance, it would be "I started working yesterday" not "I've started working yesterday". 2: If you have a sentence where you did X in the past and you're talking about the amount of time that has passed rather than talking about a specific time in the past, you probably need to add "ago". So you'd say "I started work last week", but you'd say "I started work one week ago". So your sentence needed an "ago" at the end to make sense. 3. Like Nezchan says, "even" just doesn't fit there. You might say "less than" by itself, or you might say "**not** even" (without any "less than"), but you wouldn't combine them and you wouldn't have "even" by itself. So. Closest construction to your first that would be correct grammar would be "I started working here less than half a year ago." or "I started working here not even half a year ago." Even then, it wouldn't express the sentiments we're looking for as well as the phrasing the scanlators went with.)

last edited at Aug 9, 2016 10:00PM by Nezchan

I keep getting this Bob Marley refrain in my head when I see this.
"Fall in love . . . fall in love . . . Let's get together and feel all right!"

last edited at Aug 4, 2016 7:22PM

Thinking of people doing things for free on their own time--
So, um . . . I notice the front page for Kase-san lists a bunch of chapters which are not scanlated. For which I am pining. Does anyone know, maybe somewhere in the depths of the 27 pages of discussion it's already been said, if anyone has plans to do any of those, and if there are any hints as to how long-range such plans might be if they exist?

last edited at Aug 2, 2016 3:43PM

I don't get why everyone's so weirded out about the eyelashes thing. There are two obvious explanations, one naturalistic, one tactical. The first is that Qiu Tong is very very lovely and Sun Jing is head over heels for her and was looking, half-hypnotized, deep into her eyes and thinking "Wowww, those beautiful eyes, those lovely eyelashes" and then was interrupted with "Why are you looking at me?" and just sort of said what she thought--those are so fascinating I wanna touch them. In which case she's just lucky she wasn't checking out Qiu Tong's boobs at the time.

The second is, Sun Jing wants to flirt with Qiu Tong and get across to her viscerally that she should be considering Sun Jing in a sensual context. One of the best ways, obviously, is physical contact. But there are a lot of physical contacts you can't ask for--it would not go over well if she said "Can I run my finger across your lips", "can I stroke your throat" et cetera, let alone naughtier areas. Eyelashes is great--it's barely a touch, doesn't have direct and obvious sexual connotations, so it's maybe OK to ask, and yet it's romantic--eyelashes are a site of beauty, and you clearly wouldn't be asking if you weren't captivated by the person, and a touch will be done very delicately.

And they are tickly. Nobody ever heard of "butterfly kisses"?

last edited at Aug 1, 2016 7:41PM

Ah, Russians. Doesn't matter if they're poetic intelligentsia, earthy peasants, or brash promiscuous clubbers, they're all angsty as hell.

SOMEONE HOLD ME BACK IM ABOUT TO PUNCH THE SHIT OUTTA THAT LAST PAGE

. . . And we would want to hold you back why?
(Oh, right, you might hurt your hand and/or your monitor)

The girl has just marked her territory, yeah.

Yup.
That is a gorgeous avatar. Who/what is it?

last edited at Jul 25, 2016 5:11PM